Imaginative Architecture

"The submissions for this year's contest were superior to previous years," says US Graphisoft president Tamas Hajas. "For the first time, we've seen cinematography at near-broadcast quality [in the requisite VR scenes and animations] that in many ways parallels the movies and commercially developed multimedia gaming environments."

An international panel from the architectural field judged the competition. This year, students and professionals competed on the same level, although a special millennium student prize was also awarded.

A selection of the winning de signs is presented on these pages. To view all the winning and finalist entries, see the Graphisoft Web site at www.gsprize.com.

-Karen Moltenbrey

First place: "The Cotton Club" by Sam Rajamanickam from Design Collective (US)

Second place: "The Ministry of Truth" by Marcel Schuler, Patrick Schmid, and Guido Zimmermann from Fachhochschule Aargau (Switzerland)

Honorable mention: "The Illustrated Man's The City" by Mark Purtell, Ross Langdon, and Lim Hong Swee from the University of Tasmania (Australia)

Student project of the millennium: "Baroque Gun Powder Magazine" by Miklos Riedel from the Technical University of Budapest (Hungary)